Accordingly the Second Musician took his leave with great humility, and spent all that night and the following day plunged in the deepest thought. As soon as the twenty-four hours had elapsed he again appeared before the King, who was awaiting him impatiently, sitting on the music-stool. “Well?” said the King. “Quite well, O King, I thank you,” replied the Second Musician, “though somewhat fatigued by my labors.” “Pshaw!” said the King impatiently. “Have you found a way of teaching me to sing?” “I have, O King,” replied the Second Musician solemnly; “but it is not an easy way. Nevertheless it is the only one.” The King assured him that money was no object, and begged him to unfold his plan. “In order to learn to sing,” said the Second Musician, “you must eat a pie composed of all the singing-birds in the world. In this way only can the difficulty of your having no natural ear for music be overcome. If a single bird is omitted, or if you do not consume the whole pie, the charm will have no effect. I leave Your Majesty to judge of the difficulty of the undertaking.”
Difficulty? The King would not admit that there was such a word. He instantly summoned his Chief Huntsman, and ordered him to send other huntsmen to every country in the world, to bring back a specimen of every kind of singing-bird. Accordingly, as there were sixty countries in the world at that time, sixty huntsmen started off immediately, fully armed and equipped.
After they were gone, the King, who was very impatient, summoned his Wise Men, and bade them look in all the books, and find out how many kinds of singing-birds there were in the world. The Wise Men all put their spectacles on their noses, and their noses into their books, and after studying a long time, and adding up on their slates the number of birds described in each book, they found that there were in all nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine varieties of singing-birds.
They made their report to the King, and he was rather troubled by it; for he remembered that the Second Musician had said he must eat every morsel of the pie himself, or the charm would have no effect. It would be a very large pie, he thought, with nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine birds in it. “The only way,” he said to himself, “will be for me to eat as little as possible until the huntsmen come back, then I shall be very hungry. I have never been very hungry in my life, so there is no knowing how much I could eat if I were.” So the King ate nothing from one week’s end to another, except bread and dripping; and by the time the huntsmen returned he was so thin that it was really shocking.
At last, after a long time, the sixty huntsmen returned, laden down with huge bags, the contents of which they piled up in a great heap in the middle of the courtyard. A mountain of birds! Such a thing had never been seen before. The mountain was so high that everybody thought the full number of birds must be there; and the Chief Cook began to make his preparations, and sent to borrow the garden roller from John the gardener, as his own was not big enough to roll out such a quantity of paste.
The King and the Wise Men next proceeded to count the birds. But alas! what was their sorrow to find that the number fell short by one! They counted again and again; but it was of no use: there were only nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight birds in the pile.
The next thing was to find out what bird was missing. So the Wise Men sorted all the birds, and compared them with the pictures in the books, and studied so hard that they wore out three pairs of spectacles apiece; and at last they discovered that the missing bird was the “Golden-breasted Kootoo.” The chief Wise Man read aloud from the biggest book:—
“The Golden-breasted Kootoo, the most beautiful and the most melodious of singing birds, is found only in secluded parts of the Vale of Coringo. Its plumage is of a brilliant golden yellow, except on the back, where it is streaked with green. Its beak is—”
“There! there!” interrupted the King impatiently; “never mind about its beak. Tell the Lord Chamberlain to pack my best wig and a clean shirt, and send them after me by a courier; and, Chief Huntsman, follow me. We start this moment for the Vale of Coringo!”
And actually, if you will believe it, the King did start off in less than an hour from the counting of the birds. He rode on horseback, and was accompanied only by the Chief Huntsman and the jews-harp band, the courier being obliged to wait for the King’s best wig to be curled.